do. It was a lucky thing that a contractor was paving the road nearby, so he turned around and drove right over them with his paving truck. And now no one in the building has any cockroaches. It’s a good thing, of course, but what kind of a natural phenomenon was this?”
Across the courtyard Aspirin looked at Alyona. The girl smiled.
“I asked you not to leave the apartment!”
Alyona stood by the window. It was raining, and tiny drops stuck to the glass, watching them from outside like clear fish eyes.
The violin lay on the clean kitchen table. Mishutka sat nearby, leaning back on the chair and watching Aspirin with his benevolent (malevolent?) plastic peepers.
“Didn’t I ask you—”
“Here is what I think,” Alyona said, as if continuing a previous business discussion. “What if it is his right? If a person decides to make a sacrifice for something he considers important, it is his choice, isn’t it? And here I show up and tell him, no, let’s go home, let’s do it all differently . . . I came to save him, but he never asked to be saved, did he?”
She turned her head to him, expecting an answer. Aspirin hesitated.
“You know he’s in pain,” he said, the first thing that came to mind.
“I don’t know. When my fingers hurt and bleed, I am also in pain, but I am happy when I can play the variations in the right tempo. If I do save him, that means he’s lost. And there will be no new music.”
“Then we will make do without new music,” Aspirin said.
Alyona looked at him from beneath her eyelashes, and, petrified, he saw himself as a cockroach. A tiny brown critter crawling out of a crack in the garbage chute.
“Yes!” he said, doubling down. “Because there are more important things than new songs. Human lives, for instance! Including yours!”
“My life is worth nothing,” she said haughtily. “I cannot be killed.”
“You shed blood just like everyone else.”
“Yes . . . And I feel pain like everyone else. But pain is not death. Death is when the music stops.”
Passing Aspirin, she went to the cupboard and stood on tiptoes reaching for a half-empty jar of jam on the bottom shelf. She placed the jar on the table and put the bear in front of it, tying a clean towel under his chin.
“Eat, Mishutka. Eat, sweetheart. It’s almost time to go.”
Aspirin glanced out of the window; paying no attention to the rain, the neighbors continued their animated discussion of today’s incident. In the epicenter Sveta the concierge waved her umbrella and he could imagine her saying to anyone who would listen, “What kind of a natural phenomenon was that?”
They don’t understand, Aspirin thought. Instead of cockroaches, the girl could have chased the residents themselves out of their homes. She could have played joy, then lechery, then—for dessert—terror. And they would dance, then copulate in the sandbox, then soil their pants and run away in fear. And no one would have escaped, not even Aspirin himself.
That she hadn’t done that didn’t make it any less terrifying, and for a tiny moment, he wondered if the people who had tried to kill her were right.
He hated himself—more than usual—in that moment.
“Good job, Mishutka. You had such a good dinner.”
Alyona put away the now empty jam jar and used a napkin to wipe the bear’s already clean face. She inspected her own hands, licked a spot of jam off her finger, and reached for the violin.
With his back to the window, Aspirin watched her pinch a few strings, tighten up the peg, and pick up the bow.
“What are you staring at?” Alyona asked.
He grimaced.
“Are you really afraid?” She frowned. “I thought you were teasing me.”
“Yes, it was a nice topic for jokes.” He had forced the words out, avoiding her eyes.
Alyona glanced at him above the bow.
“Every now and then I feel sorry for you, Aspirin. And every now and then I don’t.”
He felt the same way about himself. “Why did you exterminate the cockroaches?” he asked, curious at her altruism.
“What if I wanted to leave a good memory of myself in this world? Do a good deed?”
“A good deed.” Aspirin shuddered. “That guy probably threw up all over his truck.”
“Do you think exterminating rats is a more pleasant activity?”
“I never said a single word about rats.”
“Then just shut up.”
She played. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking somewhere in the distance, she began a sweet, gentle melody. Aspirin thought he’d already heard